Equidistribution of numerical semigroup gaps modulo \(m\) (Q2144590)

This paper deals with the study of numerical semigroups. These are submonoids of \((\mathbb{N},+)\), the natural numbers under addition, such that the complement, called the gap, is a finite set. Numerical semigroups are a classical and interesting object of study that has been considered by many mathematicians for over a century. The paper specifically tries to answer the question, as to when the gap is equidistributed modulo an integer \(m\). Equidistributed modulo \(m\) means that every congruence class has the same number of elements. The first result in this direction can be deduced from a paper by \textit{W. Wang} and \textit{T. Wang} [Comput. Math. Appl. 56, No. 5, 1328--1334 (2008; Zbl 1155.11016)], where they show that the gap of a semigroup \(S=\langle a,b\rangle\), with \(a,b\) coprime, has equal parts even and odd numbers if and only if \(a=2\) or \(b=2\). This is to say, the gap of \(S\) is equidistributed modulo \(2\) if and only if \(a=2\) or \(b=2\). The author of this paper answers this question in a much broader setting. A standout result and direct generalisation of the above example is given in Proposition 3.9, which states that for any \(0\neq a\in S\) with \(\gcd(a,m)=1\), the gap of \(S\) is equidistributed if and only if \(\mathrm{Ap}(S;a)\setminus \{0\}=\{1,2,3,\ldots, a-1\}\pmod m\). Here, \(\mathrm{Ap}(S;a):=\{s\in S\mid s-a\not\in S\}\) denotes the Apéry set of \(S\) relative to \(a\), which, as a reminder, always has \(a\) number of elements. Based on the above result, the author generalises the result in Theorem 4.5 to the case when the Apéry set is an arithmetic sequence. The paper proceeds to simplifying the condition for certain classes of semigroups, and in these settings, gives strong characterisations as to when the gap is equidistributed.